Cormac MacConnell: Confessions of one of the ‘Bs’ in a ‘B&B’

Once upon a time (I have to use the cracked Cormac to tell this yarn in your language), I was the happiest farmhouse double bed on the edge of the Wild Atlantic Way.

Life was great.

I was in a sun-drenched bedroom overlooking a golden beach and the blue sea.

I was dressed with warm cotton sheets and pillows.

My sole occupant for many years was the farm grandfather, Pakie. He was a lovely man.

He was as light as a feather and as clean as a whistle, and never snored.

He would come up to me every night after the nine o’clock news, say his three Hail Marys to the picture of the Sacred Heart on the wall, and be asleep in five minutes.

He would get up for the milking as bright as a lark every morning.

His daughter in law, Marie, changed my cottons and turned the mattress every week without fail.

Life was mighty fine until last April, when everything went badly wrong.

I felt Pakie very cold and stiff at the end of the first week of April, and I couldn’t warm him up. I know now, from what I heard, that he had died peacefully in his sleep during the small hours.

Everything went crazy for the next week.

Pakie was left lying here on his pillow, and the whole parish came to visit and pray by my side in their turn, and to grieve for him.

Then, big men in black suits came and took him away to the chapel, in what ye call a hearse.

I was lonesome after him. A few days later, Marie stripped me totally and left me alone in the room. That was the beginning of my time of torment.

And there is the pure truth.

I could always hear Marie and her husband Con, Pakie’s son, talking downstairs.

I learned quickly that it cost a fortune to bury Pakie

decently, at a time they were already badly worried about falling farm prices for about everything, and the likely clout on them of something I think they called Exit.

Sounded like that anyway.

There was a lot of stress in their voices, until one morning I heard Marie, a great woman entirely, telling Con she could sort out everything before the end of the year.

That afternoon, she came into my room, covered me with dreadful cold pink nylon sheets and pillowcases, took down the picture of the Sacred Heart and replaced it with a woeful picture of foreign monkeys up a tree.

Outside on the side of the road, I saw Con hanging up a big sign which read “B&B”, and dammit, I did not know then I was the first “B” of that. And my torment and shame began that very night.

Now I am not of the generation that spreads lies and scandal, but I have had dreadful times ever since.

I will be discreet and say only that the majority of those that Marie has brought to my room do not behave one bit like my poor Pakie.

I quickly picked up on the fact that most of them were sleeping in the one bed

together for the first time, and were not interested in sleeping at all at all. I heard words like “good fling” and “affair” during the torrid hanky panky that happened every night, all night.

I won’t go into details, but four of my fine mattress springs are already broken and more are very weak.

You would not believe the kind of stuff that happens, and the curtains are always tightly closed too.

It is dreadful.

Would ye believe that Marie one night brought up two big brawny lads with Kerry

accents, that looked like farmers. But I swear that as soon as she closed the door behind her, they started kissing and hugging and canoodling and landed in on top of me from about six feet up.

The awful truth.

And they had one of my fine walnut legs cracked badly before they left in the morning. And yesterday evening there arrived two huge Scandinavian women, each weighing about 14 stone for sure, six feet tall and more, and they did more damage to my innards than even the Kerrymen.

And faces on them like

angels.

I suppose I should be a bit consoled by the fact that Marie and Con, talking below in the kitchen, are in great form these days.

I gather they have moved into the garage for the summer, so that all five beds in the house are involved in this B&B project, and they have already cleared their debts. Con said yesterday they are making more money now than they ever did from the bullocks.

I hope, though, my colleagues in the other rooms are faring better than me.

Marie kits me out every afternoon with these cheap cold nylon sheets and pillowcases, and the feel of them beneath that picture of the bloody monkeys always

reminds me of poor Pakie’s last night with me.

I honestly don’t think I will last until the end of this month before collapsing. That left leg is very weak altogether

already. Ready to give up the ghost.

What I am saying is that it is awful hard to be a “B” like me, these different days along the Wild Atlantic Way. It is far wilder than you could ever

believe. And very different to the way things were back in the days when couples had to produce a marriage licence before they could book in.

I hear footsteps on the stairs again now, and have to leave ye. Wish me an easy night.